How city's growth plan is getting creative in battle for business and jobs

Website launch: From left are Craig Chettle, from Confetti Media Group, Alex Farquharson, from Nottingham Contemporary, and Councillor Nick McDonald, from Nottingham City Council, at the launch of the Creative Quarter website.

KATHY McArdle is sitting at a table in Eve's waiting for me. Eve's is the latest addition to New College Nottingham's Lace Market campus, a café overlooking the new square on St Mary's Gate run by its catering students.

She has come armed with fact sheets and pen and paper to make a note of questions.

She is joined by Nick McDonald, a city councillor who has pinned his reputation as an up-and-coming mover and shaker delivering City Deal, the flagship policy of Nottingham's Growth Plan.

They are sensitive to sceptical questions that there is little to show for 18 months of the Creative Quarter.

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Ms McArdle arrived in May from Salford and Mr McDonald stresses that the vision is a ten-year slow-burn project.

But behind the scenes, much has been happening and he acknowledges that the Creative Quarter (CQ) partners have not been good at communicating what they have been about.

Two big deals recently will allow the city council and the CQ board to point to physical evidence of their ambition.

Sneinton Market was once the wholesale market for Nottingham where traders went to acquire a daily stock of fresh food for their shops.

The six buildings have been bought by the council and will become low-cost units and workshops for small businesses beginning to feel their way.

Further up Carlton Road, a little over half a mile from the nearest tram stop, the council has bought a former factory and warehouse and says it will create, with the help of ERDF funding, a technology centre with ultrafast broadband which will make it especially attractive to creative firms sitting alongside Antenna, the media training centre in Beck Street.

Another idea could be to build on Nottingham's reputation as Game City. This is no more than an idea but Ms McArdle and Mr McDonald believe the initiative could become the foundation for much more.

A fashion and retail academy could also be a possibility but again, the idea is barely at the conceptual stage, let alone gestation.

Mr McDonald concedes that getting the Creative Quarter will take time. It is handicapped by lack of superfast and ultrafast broadband, expected by summer 2015, and crucial for businesses such as architects sending large files quickly.

Ms McArdle comes from an arts background in the North-West, which may not offer the skills to reel out to hi-tech inward investors. It appears to be a role that Mr McDonald is comfortable doing and which is why he has joined us in Eve's.

The CQ website was finally launched last week, while the long-awaited strategy document will be published in April. An action plan will "sit beneath" the strategy, says Ms McArdle.

The Creative Quarter has left its boundaries flexible to suit wherever grants and loans can bring jobs. Perhaps surprisingly there has been no audit of indigenous businesses in the Lace Market area to discover what they have and if any share a common direction of flow. Thirty years ago, there were still the remnants of the rag trade but even they were in different segments of the industry.

The board of the Creative Quarter company will deliver the strategy with the support of the local authority, which has taken responsibility for capital projects.

A key to the success of the Creative Quarter is the availability of funding and Ms McArdle says 100 firms have been "signposted". One of the first was ICN, the app publisher. Another was Marchini Curran, the architectural practice in Halifax Place which received a loan to help it take on more staff and expand.

"It is a really wide mix who have accessed the loan finance," adds Ms McArdle. "Does that have traction? The CQ Loan Fund has made 13 loans to existing and new businesses in less than a year, loans of £269,000 creating six new jobs. We are talking architects, SMEs, retail, restaurants."

The N'Tech fund was set up with support from the Regional Growth Fund giving grants to businesses leveraging four-to- one private investment to help businesses expand. In six months, it has made grants of £3.5m.

Grants in the Creative Quarter alone total £1.4m, leveraging in £6.6m of private sector investment and creating 189 full-time jobs. "These are lots of different schemes agreed through City Deal for different purposes – grants, loan equity or RDF redevelopment money," says Mr McDonald. "Some is Tax Increment Financing where we and invest in regeneration set against future business rate uplift."

Down the road on the edge of the Creative Quarter, BioCity will look to expand at some point with a new modern building for its growing tenants.

Sneinton Market has the potential to be one of the most imaginative and creative spaces. When the market moved, the buildings were retained. Some have been occupied by small owner-managed businesses, helped by cheap rents.

With £5m of ERDF funding, they will be "full-to-capacity high-quality units" for creative workspace, home for small SMEs and creative firms on low rents, explains Ms McArdle. "It will become grow-on space for those working out of their bedroom," she adds. "It will be affordable space with opportunities for some light manufacturing, artisan or craft use. It can lead to opportunities for apprenticeships."

Surprisingly, an issue for the CQ is a shortage of space. Mr McDonald says much has been used up and the challenge is to create more, converting old heritage buildings such as those on St Mary's Gate.

"All core cities are looking with the Government at creating Growth Hubs, mini regional development agencies,

"It would be independent and there are places it could go in the Creative Quarter run by the local authority and D2N2 [the local enterprise partnership for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire].

"Some Government functions devolved through the Department for Business Innovation and Skills might be found in a mini Growth Hub.

"We are trying to make the CQ the focal point of business growth, economic activity and thinking. It can't be achieved overnight but as these projects come together, they will start to make a big difference," says Mr McDonald.

Ms McArdle has been behind the city's Vacant Shop Scheme such as Annie's Burger Shack on Broadway, the terrace in Cobden Chambers and Wired Café. "They create a visitor destination and economy," she says.

Mr McDonald insists these operations are needed to sit alongside the hi-tech firms such as those in BioCity.

"The more bio-tech businesses, games designers and software developers we can get into this area, the more good retailing and leisure we will get. Already Hockley feels different from a year ago. More than half the inward investment inquiries to the council are from businesses saying they want to locate to the Creative Quarter.

"We are starting to have a measurable effect on the confidence of the market."

To Ms McArdle, giving firms a network is also important. "It's about supporting existing businesses. While none of the grant schemes is directed at existing businesses, we are working to help those that might potentially be struggling and need additional business support, and ensure they have access to mentoring. We have taken on a number of businesses."

Mr McDonald was involved from the early stages of City Deal and negotiations with ministers. "It is important to understand that the Creative Quarter was the flagship project within the Growth Plan and the focal point of the City Deal although it wasn't the only element of either.

"We have used the CQ in some ways as a way of getting a wider package of support. There is a scheme called the Creative Quarter Feeder Project which is based on business rates and paid for by business rate uplift over 25 years. As a council, we get to keep 100 per cent of that from the Creative Quarter. It is supporting Trinity Square, improving Derby Road. This means the CQ becomes the hub from which flows regeneration to the rest of the city."

Some of this cash has been used to pay for improving pedestrian links and footways in the CQ, says Ms McArdle.

BioCity and Antenna are delivering "intensive business support," an accelerator programme. And the Creative Quarter board will become the steward.

"We have had a year of activity with lots of things happening but we have failed to communicate it properly," adds McDonald.

Comments

Surely at this 18 month milestone a public report of CQ's progress is due listing all of the activities of the CG Company, expenditure and returns, with a caparison made of achieved outcomes, jobs and businesses created with this then related directly to the goals set out in detail and at intervals in the City Deal Growth Plan. So that progress can be evaluated and perhaps the plan and CQ's strategy adapted according to this feedback. So as to make sure that we're on track to achieve the stated goals and ensure that maximum value for money is being achieved. Overheads kept down with only relative and reasonable consultant and business advisor costs. With regard to the Grants and Loans that have been made and other funding supposedly leveraged, headlines of 5 to 1or even 10 to 1 returns are reminiscent of those made of rampant unregulated public expenditure under the last government and we know where that led. There should also be concrete proof of additionally, evidence that these developments, outcomes, returns wouldn't have happened anyway and without City Deal or other public money. Otherwise this is just subsidy and works against productivity, genuine business growth and sustainability. The jobs created should similarly be evidenced and evaluated and detail supplied of what they are? At what level and pay? Demonstration that they are a direct consequence of CQ's actions. 189 full time jobs is a bit general. Some overall cost benefit analysis could also be done at this point and certainly any Bank would be wanting a progress report on any investments they had made in Business Growth and so shouldn't CQ. We the tax paying Public? We know the £1 billion spent by our Regional Development Agency resulted in little return and we don't hear much about the returns on previous ERDF or other European funding spending. CQ's must be evaluated and evidenced transparently, in detail and in timely fashion. Otherwise it not only undermines confidence in Growth Strategies and Public Spending par se, as the recent claims by the EU that it itself was awash with corruption to the tune of £100 billion a year. But our own Business and Public Administration's integrity. And ultimately it will only create hollow Businesses, facades, that with a hiccup in the market or public cash-flow will simply collapse. Nottingham's Creative sector needs to be built on accountable stone not shifting sands. That's achieved by transparency, openness and accountably. 18 months to get a website together, really?